Carrie Fisher - Biography - IMDb Carrie Fisher Biography Showing all 92 items Jump to: Overview (4) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trade Mark (5) | Trivia (49) | Personal Quotes (31) | Salary (1) Overview (4) 5' 1" (1.55 m) Mini Bio (1) Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, to singers/actors Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds . She was an actress and writer, and is known for Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) (aka Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977)), Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). Fisher is also known for her book, "Postcards From The Edge", and Fisher wrote the screenplay for the movie from her novel.

Carrie Fisher and talent agent Bryan Lourd have a daughter, Billie Lourd (Billie Catherine Lourd), born on July 17, 1992. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Jen Kilmer Spouse (1) Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars films Often played smirking, sarcastic characters Large brown eyes Her father Eddie Fisher left her mother, Debbie Reynolds , when Carrie was two years old in order to marry Elizabeth Taylor . Mother, with Bryan Lourd , of daughter Billie Lourd (Billie Catherine Lourd), born on July 17, 1992. Older half-sister of Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher . Older sister of Todd Fisher . The punk rock group Blink 182 wrote a song called "A New Hope", in which her Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) character Princess Leia is the lead singer's dream girl. She made her stage debut in 1975 in the chorus of the musical Irene, which starred her mother, Debbie Reynolds . Half-sister-in-law of Christopher Duddy and Byron Thames . Attended the Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), which also starred Mark Hamill . It was the first time the two had appeared in the same film since Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983). Neither of them knew the other was involved in the project until shortly after filming had been completed. They would later reunite again in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). She did her very first European signing in London, England in a hotel library on August 3, 2003. It was an exclusive one-day signing, and tickets limited to 500. She has confirmed in her autobiography that she disliked the "bagel bun" hairstyle she wore in the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). However, prior to filming, the studio had requested that she lose some weight first, which she hadn't. Out of fear of being fired for it, she was eager to comply with everything that director George Lucas suggested, which included the hairstyle.

When asked to choose her favorite moment from the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) trilogy, she explained that her favorite moments were the arguing scenes between her and Harrison Ford . She had to stand on a box for many of her scenes with Harrison Ford in the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) trilogy because she was roughly a foot shorter than him and did not fit into the frame. Former stepdaughter of Connie Stevens , Harry Karl and Elizabeth Taylor . She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and spoke on this topic to thousands of psychiatrists assembled for the American Psychiatric Association's Annual Meeting in May 2004 in New York City. She was listed as a potential nominee on the 2006 Razzie Award nominating ballot in the category of the Worst Supporting Actress category for her performance in the film Undiscovered (2005), however, she failed to receive a nomination. Weighed 7 lbs 2 ozs at birth. Her mother, Debbie Reynolds , lived next door to her for most of her life. She was once engaged to Dan Aykroyd .

She has one daughter, Billie Lourd , whose father is the film agent, Bryan Lourd . Fisher and Lourd never married. After he left her for a man, she used the experience as the opening premise for her novel, The Best Awful. She wrote several novels, including the semi-autobiographical Postcards from the Edge, a thinly veiled study of the relationship between Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds . It later became the film Postcards from the Edge (1990), which starred Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine in the Fisher and Reynolds roles respectively. She revealed in her memoir Wishful Drinking that she once had a romantic relationship with U.S. Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut). When Dodd was asked for a comment by a reporter from The Kansas City Star in 2007, he explained that "it was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.". She was good friends with Michael Jackson and Meryl Streep . Streep portrayed Fisher in Postcards from the Edge (1990).

In her 2008 memoir "Wishful Drinking", she noted that, like her mother in Singin' in the Rain (1952), she became famous at age 19 for her role in a classic hit alongside two male co-stars. She also mentioned that the title of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) could also refer to her celebrity parents' infamous divorce. Her personal assistant was Kim Painter . She was author William Goldman 's first choice for the character Buttercup in The Princess Bride (1987), a role which went to Robin Wright instead. She was longtime friends with Miguel Ferrer , who encouraged her and helped her prepare for her Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) audition. Their mothers - Debbie Reynolds and Rosemary Clooney respectively - were both best known for their performances in hit 1950s musicals: Singin' in the Rain (1952) and White Christmas (1954). She continued to date Paul Simon for 8 years after their divorce, until finally breaking up in 1991.

She appeared in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) parody episodes of both Family Guy (1999) and Robot Chicken (2005). She played Mon Mothma, one of the few other female characters in the series. In the latter series, Princess Leia - now played by Alex Borstein - says "I don't like her. Sister-in-law of Catherine Hickland , and ex-sister-in-law of Donna Jean Freberg and Donavan Freberg . Her paternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Her mother had English, some Scottish, Scots-Irish (Northern Irish), and German, and distant French, ancestry. She wrote her own scene for her cameo appearance in Scream 3 (2000). In 1990, she sold the big screen rights to her book, Surrender the Pink, to Warner Bros. for $1 million. Steven Spielberg was producing, with Demi Moore attached to star. Fisher wrote the screenplay, but the project stalled in development. In 1994, she did a rewrite of the script of Intolerable Cruelty (2003), shortly after the original script sold.

The Coen Brothers rewrote the script years later and none of Fisher's work remained in the finished film. She accomplished a 35-pound weight loss in her preparation for Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). She admitted that she found it difficult to act across from Peter Cushing in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) for two reasons. She thought the dialog was awful, and Cushing was so nice and polite to her on set between takes that she found it very difficult to show the disdain her character, Princess Leia felt towards Cushing's character, Grand Moff Tarkin. Her French bulldog Gary accompanied her everywhere, even onto TV talk show sets whenever she was a guest. She auditioned for the lead role in Carrie (1976), while Sissy Spacek auditioned for Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977), as George Lucas and Brian De Palma were holding joint auditions. They ultimately swapped roles. Contrary to popular belief, Fisher did not turn down Spacek's role because of the nudity involved.

She was originally cast as Miss Scarlett in Clue (1985), but had to check into rehab a week before filming began. Her final acting project was the third season of Catastrophe (2015). She was the only cast member allowed to improvise and her own real life dog Gary portrays her dog on the show. She passed away a week after finishing work on the show. She co-starred with her daughter in Billie Lourd in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Star Wars: Episode VIII (2017). Lourd auditioned without Fisher's awareness. She died only one day before her mother Debbie Reynolds . She was well known for her sense of humor and quick wit. One of her father Eddie Fisher 's first hits in the 1950s was a song entitled "Oh! My Pa-Pa". Her father, of course, had a scandalous affair with Elizabeth Taylor and ultimately left her mother, Debbie Reynolds to marry Taylor. When Fisher and Reynolds were making a joint television appearance, Fisher quipped that her mother could sing, too, and should have written and sang a song entitled, "Oh! My Faux Pas".

She suffered an ectopic pregnancy whilst married to Paul Simon in May 1984. She turned down the role of Emmeline Lestrange in The Blue Lagoon (1980) which went to Brooke Shields , the role of Sarah Connor in The Terminator (1984) which went to Linda Hamilton , and the role of Kathryn Murphy in The Accused (1988) which went to Kelly McGillis . As well as working as a script doctor for films, she also polished scripts for George Lucas ' television series Young Indiana Jones (1992). Lucas had directed Fisher as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) trilogy. There exists a Stars Wars script purported to be hers, which shows extensive pen and ink changes to the dialog, perhaps marking the beginning of the script doctor part of her career. Lucas later hired her to polish the scripts of the original trilogy's prequels Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999), Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002), and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005).

She was considered for several roles which ultimately went to other actresses, including the role of Regan in The Exorcist (1973) which went to Linda Blair , the role of Iris in Taxi Driver (1976) which went to Jodie Foster , the role of Violet in Pretty Baby (1978) which went to Brooke Shields , the role of Rizzo in Grease (1978) which went to Stockard Channing , the role of Lois Lane in Superman (1978) which went to Margot Kidder , the role of Linda Barrett in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) which went to Phoebe Cates , the role of Elvira Hancock in Scarface (1983) which went to Michelle Pfeiffer , the role of Deborah Gelly in Once Upon a Time in America (1984) which went to Elizabeth McGovern , the role of Maerose Prizzi in Prizzi's Honor (1985) which went to Anjelica Huston , the role of Charlie in Top Gun (1986) which went to Kelly McGillis , the role of Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction

 (1987) which went to Glenn Close , the role of Katharine Parker in Working Girl (1988) which went to Sigourney Weaver , the role of Vicki Vale in Batman (1989) which went to Kim Basinger , the role of Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman (1990) which went to Julia Roberts , the role of Kate McCallister in Home Alone (1990) which went to Catherine O'Hara , the role of Thelma Dickinson in Thelma & Louise (1991) which went to Geena Davis , the role of Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct (1992) which went to Sharon Stone , and the role of Annie in Speed (1994) which went to Sandra Bullock .

Died the same year as her Star Wars co-star Kenny Baker. Personal Quotes (31) I was street smart, but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive. I have no ambitions as an actress. I'm going to do a day's work on Scream 3 (2000), but that's all I can handle, a day's work. On her father's gossipy 1999 autobiography: "I'm going to have my DNA fumigated." I always wanted to do what my mother did - get all dressed up, shoot people, fall in the mud. I never considered anything else. You can't find true affection in Hollywood because everyone does the fake affection so well. Females get hired along procreative lines. After 40, we're kind of cooked. On merchandising for Star Wars: "I signed my likeness away. Every time I look in the mirror, I have to send Lucas a couple of bucks." My father ( Eddie Fisher ) was a short Jewish man. My husband ( Paul Simon ) was a short Jewish man. Go figure.

Describing working with Harrison Ford on the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977): Mark was 24, I was 19 and he [Harrison] was 33. He was like the big man on campus. You looked at him and you said to yourself, 'He's going to be a star.' Explaining why gaffer's tape was sometimes used under her Princess Leia costume in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977): "As we all know, there is no underwear in space." Acting engenders and harbours qualities that are best left way behind in adolesence. People-pleasing, going on those interviews and jamming your whole personality into getting the job, ingratiating yourself to people you wouldn't f***ing spit on if they were on fire. Describing the filming of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980): "Mark [Hamill] was off on Dagobah while Harrison [Ford] and I were were getting drunk in Cloud City." I was born into big celebrity. It could only diminish. Leia is not a real character.

She is more of a caricature, and is somewhat one-dimensional. It's not really possible to write out a list of Princess Leia's likes and dislikes. I do know her favorite color, though, it's white. She wears white all the time. But that doesn't help me much. I've got a lot of photos of me when I was very young at parties with celebrities, but I don't really remember the people or when the photos were taken. I think of my body as a side effect of my mind. On success: There is no point at which you can say, "Well, I'm successful now. I might as well take a nap". On time: Instant gratification takes too long. On experience: Maturity: A stoic response to endless reality. [on the cultural significance of her parents] I don't know if they were culturally significant, but they were very popular. My mother and my father were America's sweethearts. They literally received that tag. Even my parents sort of went along with the assumption that they were a good couple, but they probably weren't a very good couple. Anyway, my father was best friends with a man named Michael Todd . Mike Todd was married to Elizabeth Taylor .

Mike Todd died in a plane crash, and my father consoled Elizabeth Taylor with his penis. [When asked if the character Princess Leia was the dark side of the force in your professional career] Oh, no. It was fun! I was young. People want it to be a problem for me. No. Those are great movies. Why shouldn't I be proud of being in that? The dark side? You ever see Hollywood Vice Squad (1986) or The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)? How about Under the Rainbow (1981)? Was Star Wars the dark side? There's so much competition for that one. [About what her father, Eddie Fisher , did to help Elizabeth Taylor after her husband Michael Todd 's death] He rushed to her side, gradually moving to her front... He consoled her with flowers and, ultimately, he consoled her with his penis. [on the sale of Lucasfilm to Disney] I'm now a Disney Princess! Even in space, there's a double standard. [On why Princess Leia never got her own light saber] I'm not as cooperative as you might want a woman to be ...

Every man, I think, or at least the ones I end up finding, there's no such thing as a consort. All men are kings. That was my little discovery in the process ... I really thought men's fantasy is to have an intellectual geisha. So what I did was I learned to cook and I took a massage course. But that's not all of it. You have to also agree. [On her relationship with Paul Simon] I got to be the only girl in an all boy fantasy, and it's a great role for women. She's a very proactive character and gets the job done. So if you're going to get typecast as something, that might as well be it for me. [On her role as Princess Leia] The father who flipped out about it [Lei's metal bikini in Return of the Jedi], 'What am I going to tell my kid about why she's in that outfit?' Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn't like it. And then I took it off. Backstage.

"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." Wishful Drinking, 2008 George comes up to me the first day of filming and he takes one look at the dress and says, "You can't wear a bra under that dress." So, I say, "Okay, I'll bite. Why?" And he says, "Because. . . there's no underwear in space." What happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn't--so you get strangled by your own bra. Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit--so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra. They always do [ask me to lose weight]. They want to hire part of me, not all of me. They want to hire about three-fourths, so I have to get rid of the fourth somehow. The fourth can't be with me. I made a joke!" [on being the daughter of a Jewish father and Protestant mother] I always felt the Jewish part more.

In fact, growing up I felt like a Jew among WASPs. Salary (1) Carrie Fisher | Wookieepedia | Fandom powered by Wikia "We signed away our likeness, so when I look in the mirror, I have to pay George a couple of bucks." ―Carrie Fisher, joking about the success of Star Wars [src] Soon after, Fisher enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, which she attended for 18 months. Her first movie appearance was in the Columbia comedy Shampoo (1975) starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, and Goldie Hawn, with Lee Grant and Jack Warden. In 1977, Fisher starred as Leia Organa in Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope , directed and written by George Lucas , along with Mark Hamill , Harrison Ford , Peter Cushing , and Alec Guinness . Star Wars was a huge success and made her internationally famous. Her character of Leia became a merchandising triumph; there were small plastic dolls of her in every toy store across the United States. Fisher has often joked that it was actually Princess Leia who became famous, and she just happened to look like her.

After her appearance in Return of the Jedi wearing the famous " metal bikini " or "slave" outfit, Fisher was, for a brief time, regarded as a sex symbol. Fisher as Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back In the late 1970s, Fisher became addicted to various drugs. (Her genetic lineage from her father, the singer Eddie Fisher , had rendered her highly physiologically vulnerable to such addictions.) She appeared as Princess Leia in the 1978 made-for-TV movie The Star Wars Holiday Special , and her drug use was quite evident from her on-screen performance. The problem became so severe that John Landis nearly dismissed her from The Blues Brothers (1980) for being unable to sober up long enough to film a proper scene. She then cleaned up and joined N.A. and A.A. She appeared on Broadway as Iris in Censored Scenes from King Kong (1980). She appeared again as Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi (1983). She was also a replacement in the Broadway play Agnes of God (1982).

Fisher's novel Postcards from the Edge —which was semi-autobiographical in the sense that she fictionalized events obviously from her real life, such as her drug addiction of the late 1970s and her complicated, precarious relationship with her mother, Mary Frances "Debbie" Reynolds—was published in 1987. It became a sensational bestseller and she received the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel. In 1990, Columbia released a movie version of Postcards from the Edge , which Fisher adapted for the screen from her own novel and which starred Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Dennis Quaid. Behind the scenes Carrie Fisher played Princess Leia Organa in A New Hope (1977), The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), and Return of the Jedi (1983). She later reprised her role for Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II , in which she also provided the voice for Mon Mothma . She also voiced Mothma via her character "Angela" on Family Guy: It's A Trap! .

Fisher hosted the November 18, 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live, in which she came onto the stage outfitted as Leia Organa, complete to her hair being arranged into the hairstyle she had employed throughout most of A New Hope, which some people had noted resembled an Imperial TIE fighter . She opens the show by telling a long "joke" based entirely on Star Wars references. She then appeared in a sketch, again as Leia, in which she sings and dances with a group of 1950s teenagers. The episode contained the first polished performance by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as their popular Blues Brothers characters, Joliet Jake (Belushi) and Elwood (Aykroyd); their performance as such actually preceded Fisher's hosting activities. Fisher later appeared in The Blues Brothers movie as Joliet Jake's vengeful ex-lover, listed in the credits as "Mystery Woman." She is one of the few actors to star in movies with both John and Jim Belushi, later appearing with Jim in the film The Man with One Red Shoe. In addition to her acting work, Fisher was also a novelist and a frequent script doctor on the screenplays of other writers.

Her novels, aside from Postcards From The Edge, include Surrender the Pink (1991), Delusions Of Grandma (1993), and The Best Awful There Is (2004). She also published a book of photographs titled Hollywood Moms (2001) and even wrote three primarily non-photographic non-fiction books, Wishful Drinking , based on a 2006 one-woman stage show she and writer-director Joshua Ravetch had jointly developed, published in 2008, Shockaholic, published in 2011, and The Princess Diarist, which was published in 2016. Fisher wrote the 1993 episode of Lucas's TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles titled "Paris, October 1916." Fisher developed and appeared in two one-woman stage shows; the first, mentioned above, was Wishful Drinking, in which she appeared during 2006 and in 2008, and the second, in which she appeared during 2008, was called A Spy In The House Of Me.

Fisher co-wrote the TV comedy movie These Old Broads (2001), of which she was also co-executive producer. It starred her mother, Debbie Reynolds, as well as Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Shirley MacLaine. In this, Taylor's character, an agent, explains to Reynolds's character, an actress, that she was in a drunken blackout when she married the actress's husband, "Freddy." Though Fisher demonstrated talent as a singer, notably in both the SNL segment she hosted and the Holiday Special , she is not known to have made any recordings of music. Fisher made a comment once about her experiences off the set of Star Wars films: "I used to go in though airports and have people say; 'Princess Leia!' Like I would then go; 'Yes?' You know, like that's my real name." When The Phantom Menace was released, Fisher commented on her eagerness to see the movie, saying, "I will be thrilled to see the new movie. I've read it and I can't wait to see, because I know that he (Lucas) does better than what's on the page...

if that's possible." For The Phantom Menace , she wrote dialogues, uncredited, for the moment when C-3PO and R2-D2 meet for the very first time. [2] In the film Scream 3 (2000), Fisher's character, Bianca Burnette, is mistaken for Carrie Fisher. Fisher pokes fun at herself with the line, "Yeah, I was up for the part of Princess Leia. But who gets it? The girl who slept with George Lucas!" Fisher appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), which also featured Mark Hamill in a role. In the 2009 film Fanboys , Fisher's character references the famous "I love you/I know" line from both The Empire Strikes Back and Return Of The Jedi. In early March of 2013 , Fisher confirmed in an interview with the Palm Beach Illustrated magazine that she would return to reprise her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens . [3] Personal life Edit Carrie Fisher had one husband, the musician Paul Simon . During their unsuccessful marriage, which lasted from 1983 to 1984, she miscarried their child.

She also dated CAA principal and agent Bryan Lourd; their daughter, Billie Catherine Lourd, was born on July 17, 1992. The couple's relationship ended when Lourd came out as bisexual. For a brief time, during her participation in The Blues Brothers , she was even engaged to Dan Aykroyd, one of her castmates. It was rumored for years that she had an affair with Harrison Ford while filming the original Star Wars film; while Fisher admitted she had a crush on Ford and spent much time with him off camera, she denied having an affair with him. In 2016, however, Fisher admitted in her autobiographical title, The Princess Diarist, that she did, in fact, have an affair with Ford. [4] In an interview on public radio in 2005, Fisher joked about being known overwhelmingly for her role as Princess Leia, and also joked that she was afraid if she ever became senile she might begin to slip back into character. Fisher publicly discussed her problems with liquor and drugs, her battles with bipolar disorder, and overcoming an addiction to prescription antidepressants, most notably on ABC TV's 20/20.

On February 26, 2005, 42-year-old Republican Party media adviser R. Gregory Stevens was found dead in a guest room at Fisher's home. She stated that he was a longtime friend and often stayed with her. An autopsy revealed he died from an overdose of cocaine and OxyContin. Fisher broke her 12 year run of non-dating by living with three-time Emmy award winning news pilot/reporter Bob Tur. The couple broke up in late 2005. In late 2007, she was reportedly seen with British novelist Salman Rushdie, sparking rumors of a romantic relationship. Death Edit On December 23 , 2016 , Carrie Fisher was reported to be in critical condition after having suffered a massive heart attack on a flight. [5] Fisher had been the victim of an Internet death hoax just days before and was filming a new series in the United Kingdom for Channel 4. [6] But much to public shock and horror, Fisher died as a result of her heart attack on December 27, 2016, at the age of 60. [7] Fisher's mother Debbie Reynolds died one day after her own passing.

[8] Fisher is survived by her brother Todd Fisher and daughter Billie Lourd . [9] Fisher and her mother had a joint private funeral service followed by burial at Hollywood Hills' Forest Lawn Memorial Park. [10] . Fisher's ashes were placed inside a large prozac pill shaped porcelain urn which was buried next to her mother's casket. Her brother Todd stated the pill had been one of Fisher's favorite possessions. [11] Filmography The Blues Brothers (1980) ... Mystery Woman Under the Rainbow (1981) ... Annie Clark Garbo Talks (1984) ... Lisa Rolfe The Man with One Red Shoe (1985) ... Paula Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) ... April Hollywood Vice Squad (1986) ... Betty Melton Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) (Reckless Youth segment) ... Mary Brown The Time Guardian (1987) ... Petra Appointment with Death (1988) ... Nadine Boynton The 'burbs (1989) ... Carol Peterson Loverboy (1989) ... Monica Delancy When Harry Met Sally...

(1989) ... Marie She's Back (1989) ... Beatrice Sibling Rivalry (1990) ... Iris Turner-Hunter Drop Dead Fred (1991) ... Janie Soapdish (1991) ... Betsy Faye Sharon Hook (1991) ... Woman kissing on bridge (uncredited) This Is My Life (1992) ... Claudia Curtis Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) ... Therapist (uncredited) Scream 3 (2000) ... Bianca Burnette Heartbreakers (2001) ... Ms. Surpin Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) ... Nun A Midsummer Night's Rave (2002) ... Mia's Mom Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) ... Mother Superior Wonderland (2003) ... Sally Hansen Carrie Fisher's roles as actress, writer, and daughter Pinterest Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage Carrie Fisher died Tuesday, Dec. 27 at the age of 60.

More than 25 years ago, EW sat down with the beloved actress to talk family, Hollywood, and her hit book-turned-movie Postcards from the Edge. Read the original 1990 feature with Fisher, which ran in the September 28, 1990 issue of Entertainment Weekly, below. Carrie Fisher — once Hollywood’s heartbreak kid, then Star Wars‘ caustic Princess Leia, and now an author who has turned her own drug rehab into a best-selling novel and the new hit movie Postcards from the Edge — has just plunked down in a worn leather chair in the living room of her Beverly Hills home. It’s a wood-beamed lodge with a cartoonish kitsch decor couched in an American West motif. Vines of Christmas twinkle lights, plastic fish, and corn cobs festoon a stained-glass bar. French doors look out onto a small yard and a pool where the rear end of a blow-up pink Cadillac floats past a pair of life-size plastic cows grazing near a tree house that’s reminiscent of F Troop‘s lookout post.

”It looks like what it is,” says Fisher drily of the scene she now calls home, ”something that ought to be left to a miniature golf course.” Although the mercury is licking the high 90s, inside the aerie of Hollywood’s newest Queen of Quips it is cool, serene, and potentially Cerebral — seemingly the perfect writer’s retreat. But in this instance looks are deceiving. ”Oh I could never write in here,” Fisher says firmly, shuffling off her sandals and taking a long pull on a take-out Coke, her current elixir of choice. ”It’s much too quiet. Maybe if the TV were on and I had to fight something, but I can’t work in silence. It’s too distracting.” Judging from the attention whipping around her, Carrie Fisher has successfully avoided any crippling calm spells for some time lately. Having originally been known as the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, subsequently as the Star Wars princess with the headmistress-in-headphones hairdo, and finally as Paul Simon’s wife for 11 months, she is now in her most successful incarnation.

This month the movie of Fisher’s 1987 Postcards, for which she did the screenplay, has opened to raves. Directed by Mike Nichols and starring Shirley MacLaine, Meryl Streep, Gene Hackman and Dennis Quaid, it is already being touted as a stocked pond of Academy Award nominations. Surrender the Pink, Fisher’s second novel, was published almost simultaneously and is being hailed as an acerbic, insightful takeoff on Hollywood mores. Referring to both her books, The New York Times calls Fisher ”The Master of the Sustained Awkward Moment,” and Steven Spielberg snapped up the movie rights to Pink for $1 million before it was completed. As a result, Fisher has suddenly established herself as a stellar specimen of a rare breed: The Truly Talented Celebrity Writer. That is no mean change of pace for a young woman — she is 33 — who never finished high school and spent her adolescence haunted by the conviction that she looked more like a thumb than like her movie-star mom. Yet despite the current adulation, Fisher, a dependably sardonic sort, is somewhat miffed. ”I call myself The Hunted Beast,” she says.

”Everyone is trying to get me to say something negative, sensational, and awful about a family member or an ex- husband. ‘Yes! [She throws her hands up in mock despair] They’re all distant and exhausting. They’re all awful!’ ” She’s also getting sick of explaining that Postcards, which has been variously described as partial autobiography, a roman è clef, and a memoir (”a f—ing memoir!”) is not really about her and Debbie Reynolds, even though there are some obvious similarities. ”I wrote about a mother actress and a daughter actress,” she says. ”I’m not shocked that people think it’s about me and my mother. It’s easier for them to think I have no imagination for language, just a tape recorder with endless batteries.” Postcards‘ heroine Suzanne (Streep) is a wisecracking actress re-entering the Hollywood scene after a drug clinic sabbatical. Her mother, Doris (MacLaine), is a well-meaning but hopelessly egocentric movie star with a glamorous career and white fur stole that utterly eclipse her daughter’s grade B comeback and denim jacket.

”Now everyone thinks that my mother and I fight on the stairs,” Fisher sighs, referring to a pivotal scene in the movie. ”I feel bad that people think that my mother is so self-obsessed that ‘how are you’ never crosses her lips. She’s not like that.” Although Fisher chose not to appear in the film (”There were too many celebrities. It would have looked like Love Boat”), Streep has helped to blur the line between reality and fiction by incorporating some of the author into her character. ”She picked at her thumb like Carrie,” says Reynolds. ”And she’s got Carrie’s vulnerability.” In fact, says director Nichols, ”in a bizarre way Meryl became Carrie. They became best friends.” But however much or little they resemble Postcards‘ characters, Fisher and Reynolds are actually quite close and have formed a mutual admiration society of sorts. ”She’s better than the mother I deserve,” Fisher says. ”Carrie’s adorable,” says Reynolds, adding that both the movie and MacLaine are ”terrific. I can’t think of anyone else playing what’s supposed to be part of me.

But actually I think the character is more Joan Crawford.” These female family ties extend to Reynolds’ mother Maxene, 78, who urged friends at a recent Girl Scout reunion to see the film. ”She told them she couldn’t believe they made such a good movie out of such a lousy book,” Fisher says, deadpan. ”As you can see, there’s a lot of support.” Fisher is renowned not only for being irrepressibly chatty, but for her bottomless quiver of sharp-edged one-liners. ”Carrie’s jokes come out so fast and furiously,” says Nichols, ”you can overlap them and layer them and get a wonderfully rich texture.” Not surprisingly, her conversational snippets, along with those of her cohorts, tend to show up in her work. ”Some lines I say and save,” she concedes, ”and some I hear. I pay particular attention to my male characters, which is why I have so many men friends.

They love being paid attention to without agenda, and they like to be the characters.” Her roster of quotemakers includes Don Henley, Albert Brooks, George Lucas, Jay McInerney, Buck Henry, producer Dan Melnick, and songwriter J.D.Souther, but even Maxene gets in on the act. ”My grandmother really says things like, ‘colder than a well-digger’s butt’ and ‘higher than a cat’s back’ and ‘we’re not rich enough to have your problems,’ ” Fisher says. ”It’s like she’s studying to be a colorful character.” All this is not to say that Fisher doesn’t bring her own flavor to her work. ”Carrie can go over ground we have traveled before and discover it in a completely fresh way,” Nichols says. ”She’s a born screenwriter.” Fisher writes in a loopy longhand and tends to work on weekends, on planes, and often out of town. Transforming Postcards into a movie script began with ”throwing the book into the backyard and setting fire to it,” she says.

”For quite a long time we pushed pieces around,” Nichols recalls, ”but then we went with the central story of a mother passing the baton to her daughter.” As for real-life resemblances, ”Carrie doesn’t draw on her life any more than Flaubert did,” he says. ”It’s just that his life wasn’t so well known.” Fisher and Nichols occasionally collaborated on rewrites in Nichols’ New York office, discussing and sometimes acting out scenes. ”Then Carrie would write them up in five minutes on her big yellow pad,” says Nichols. ”Writing pours out of her so easily and gives her such pleasure.” It also helps obscure some pain. ”I talk well because I feel bad,” Fisher says. ”I take things too hard and it’s just loony. But one thing I get out of it is that I can describe the way-too-hard in a funny way and it laces the difficulty with a certain pleasure.” Postcards was just such an antidote. The book, written in five months, was prompted by Fisher’s 1985 respite in a drug rehab center, the result of a longstanding fondness for Percodan and acid.

”I knew I was a drug addict long before I did anything about it,” she says now. ”But insight is one thing. Application of insight is another.” As an outpatient, she was prescribed lithium to control the mood swings which alternated between a high she named Roy (also the name of the good boyfriend in Pink) and a low she named Pam. After a month on the drug, she found herself ”standing in a store in front of a case of silverware, waiting to develop a taste for it — and I didn’t care how long it took. That’s how slowed-down I was. I got off lithium and started writing.” After a 1985 Esquire interview with Paul Slansky, in which Fisher’s offbeat intellect was given free rein, publishing types suggested she try her hand at some essays aimed in the literary vicinity of Fran Liebowitz/West. Slansky, initially hired as a scribe, was recast as an editor when it became clear Fisher was her own writer, as well as her own muse. She often acted her characters out in her yard before writing them, with Slansky and a tape recorder in attendance.

”Her rendition of Alex [the book’s ranting drugster- in-denial],” he recalls, ”is the best performance I’ve ever seen her give.” Readers were equally taken with her written renditions. Postcards spent three weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Fisher began thinking of herself as a writer, and, ironically, her acting improved. Her part as Meg Ryan’s friend Marie in When Harry Met Sally? ”was among her best work because it was no longer the only thing she did,” says Nichols. ”Writing gave her an authority beyond acting.” ”I’m blessed or burdened with one of those natures for which every tweak of a situation is an enormous world to me,” Fisher says. Some tweaks become more momentous than others. Surrender the Pink‘s title was created during the book tour for Postcards when a friend of Fisher’s jokingly jumped her in her hotel room, saying, ”OK, baby, spread ’em.

Surrender the pink.” Recalls Fisher, ”I heard it pornographically, but I mean it metaphorically — give up the feminine side.” Fisher, who claims to have a yin (female) center propelled by a yang (male) engine, spent two years on Pink, although she let it simmer while working on the Postcards movie. Like Postcards, the new novel’s core character, Dinah, has Fisher-like tics: She picks at her thumb and has a personality like a ”pack of wild dogs on a leash dragging her around.” At the center of the tale is Dinah’s renewed interest in her old boyfriend, which deepens in direct proportion to his interest in a new girlfriend. Dinah follows the two to East Hampton and, trapped while trespassing, spends a night eavesdropping from a closet. Of course, this too is fiction, but Reynolds found it so lifelike she put the book down mid-read. ”I thought it was so upsetting she had to go through all these things,” she says. ”When I told Carrie, she said, ‘Mother!

I’m a novelist.’ ” ”I said, ‘You write much too real, dear.’ ” That trait was not music to ex-husband Paul Simon’s ears. Rudy, Pink‘s somewhat bloodless anti-hero, is a prospering playwright who prefers women low on the profile pole. ”It just doesn’t work out when two people are ambitiously pursuing their careers,” he tells Dinah. ”?A woman has to have a less intense job.” When Fisher, who is friendly with Simon, read him chunks of the book, ”he was dismayed that the Rudy character was so pompous,” she says. ”He asked that he be given more jokes because people were going to think it was him.” She did. ”He got off easy,” says a friend. ”The bad thing about my relationship with Paul was that we were similar animals,” says Fisher, who met Simon in 1978 and married him in 1983. ”Where there should be a flower and a gardener, we were two flowers. In the bright sun. Wilting.” Despite her claims that she is ”not the most nurturing little lady to cross the border,” Fisher’s generosity is legendary (she bought her mother a Cadillac after Star Wars).

Her house is constantly filled with guests and her annual parties are famous for their fried chicken and highpowered anti-chic company. As outgoing and funny as Fisher is, she has the capacity for explosive indignation, and one topic that sets it off is sexism, especially in Hollywood: She’s incensed by a system that skimps on actresses’ pay and considers women over the hill at an age when men are hitting their prime. ”Meryl makes less than Patrick Swayze, okay?” she fumes. ”Actresses are dispensable. It doesn’t matter who the female is!” But men! ”Jeezus it’s so much better being a man than a woman,” she says. ”Men don’t want you to feel bad so they want you to think of all the good things like ‘the thrill of childbirth’ and multiple orgasm and you live seven extra years. And get to buy purses. Men can have it all so easy! They can have a huge career and a wife who has no career and decorates the house and goes on vacation with him and has children. And then he can turn her in when he doesn’t want her anymore and get someone younger and more worshipful.” Fisher has been through this drill.

She was 18 months old when her father, crooner Eddie Fisher, left America’s then sweetheart, her mom, for Elizabeth Taylor. ”Carrie kept waiting for him to call and come home,” says Reynolds. ”He was a big recording star and she’d hear his music on the radio and say ‘Daddy? Da-da?’ Inside, she never got over it.” As Pink‘s Dinah puts it, ”My father loved me and I never saw him. He might as well not have loved me.” Reynolds’ next marriage, to shoe king Harry Karl, brought the family stability, but it proved to be temporary. ”A lot of Carrie’s problems started in 1972 when my husband lost all the money and the homes and the cars and the everything and we had to start all over,” says Reynolds, now married to real estate developer Richard Hamlett. Fisher took refuge in reading Fitzgerald, Bellow, Barth, and Maugham and, Mike Nichols recalls, writing ”startling poems and pieces. She was a hilarious smartass kid.” At age 13 Carrie began touring with her mother’s musical revue, and when Reynolds opened in Irene on Broadway in 1973, Carrie sang in the chorus.

The next year she got a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London but didn’t want to go. ”It was our only confrontation,” Reynolds says. ”She wanted to stay home and go shopping with her girlfriends on Rodeo Drive.” Fisher went to the school and loved it, but left a year later, at 19, to play the intergalactic fugitive Princess Leia. The ensuing space trilogy earned her more than $1 million, and Fisher later appeared in such hyper-hip fare as The Blues Brothers and Amazon Women on the Moon. But in the early ’80s she became friendly with the Saturday Night Live crowd, a cozy crew who shared her skewed humor and taste for drugs. In 1985 she was rushed to a hospital with an overdose of Percodan. ”A by-product of the worst thing,” says Fisher of that experience, ”is that now I write better.” Romance has recently skidded in on the heels of Fisher’s successes. She and Bryan Lourd, a Creative Artists talent agent, have been seeing each other for several months. ”Neither of us can remember meeting,” Fisher says. ”We just have to assume we did. It’s very beautiful.” So are her prospects.

She is working on the screenplays for both Pink and her short story Christmas in Vegas, and her next novel, Delusions of Grandma, is part of a lucrative three- book deal with Simon & Schuster. ”I’m not being careful anymore,” she promises of its subject matter. ”It’s going to be about a homosexual grandmother who commits incest with most of her family.” Her acting career is percolating too. ”Acting is a relief now,” she says. ”As long as I don’t have too much dialogue.” Recently she has played a caustic gynecologist in Carl Reiner’s Sibling Rivalry (scheduled for October) and a psychobabbling best friend (again) in Drop Dead Fred with Phoebe Cates, which she just completed shooting. Next, she jokes, she just might do a female version of The Hunt for Red October, ”where there are no men and women go around and blow up people and dive through the sea for two hours.” She’s also entertaining serious offers to direct.

”I’m loud enough and I’m persnickety enough,” Fisher says, ”but if I do it now it would only be because I’ve got the opportunity and not because I’d necessarily be good at it.” On the other hand, as her Postcards alter ego puts it, ”Instant gratification takes too long.” Show Full Article

Question: Carrie Fisher is the daughter of which actress?
Answer: Debbie Reynolds